Origin Of Programs Research Articles

Sri Lanka–Maldives Distance Education Program in Library and Information Science Conducted by the SLLA: A Historical Narration

This research paper presents a chronological account of the initiation, implementation, and conclusion of the joint Sri Lanka-Maldives distance education program in library and information science. The three-tier diploma course started in 1996 and was officially completed in 2003. Tier one was repeated in 2003 but was not continued to other levels. This study explores the program's origins, implementation, outcome, and challenges. The research method was to analyze the publicly accessible Annual Reports of the Sri Lanka Library Association (SLLA) from 1995 to 2005. The results of the content analysis were presented in a narrative style. This is the second stage of a multi-stage research which includes an in-depth literature review on published research, administrative documents of partner organizations, and interviews with selected participants.Although there was a significant enrollment of students initially in 1996, the pass rate was relatively low. The program took more time to complete due to financial challenges. As a result, it prolonged for a duration of 8-9 years for delivery instead of 3 years. The narration reveals the course organizers' and participants' tiring efforts throughout the project. It is a unique historical case for an international library and information science capacity-building initiative.

Sweet Fuel: A Political and Environmental History of Brazilian Ethanol

Sweet Fuel: A Political and Environmental History of Brazilian Ethanol

The funders' perspective: Lessons learned from the National Institutes of Health Diversity Program Consortium evaluation.

Advancing diversity in the biomedical research workforce is critical to the ability of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to achieve its mission. The NIH Diversity Program Consortium is a unique, 10-year program that builds upon longstanding training and research capacity-building activities to promote workforce diversity. It was designed to rigorously evaluate approaches to enhancing diversity in the biomedical research workforce at the student, faculty, and institutional level. In this chapter we describe (a) the program's origins, (b) the consortium-wide evaluation, including plans, measures, challenges, and solutions, and (c) how lessons learned from this program are being leveraged to strengthen NIH research-training and capacity-building activities and evaluation efforts.

The Institutional Hearing Program: A Study of Prison-Based Immigration Courts in the United States

This article presents the findings of the first research study of the Institutional Hearing Program (IHP), a prison-based immigration court system run by the U.S. Department of Justice. Although the IHP has existed for four decades, little is publicly known about the program's origin, development, or significance. Based on original analysis of archival records, this study makes three central contributions. First, it traces the origin and growth of the IHP within federal, state, and municipal correctional facilities. Notably, although the IHP began in 1980 as a program to deport Cuban asylum seekers held in civil detention in an Atlanta prison, it now operates to deport noncitizens serving prison sentences in twenty-three federal prisons, nineteen state prison systems, and a few municipal jails. Second, this article uncovers the crucial role that prison-based immigration courts have played in shaping the design of carceral institutions around the priorities of an immigration system that primarily targets Latinos for deportation. Third, this article shows how immigration courts embedded in carceral spaces have served as influential, yet overlooked, incubators of changes to immigration law and practice that today apply to all immigration courts, not just the IHP. These findings have important implications for contemporary understandings of the relationship between immigration detention, racialized control of migration, and penal punishment.

The Futurists of Beijing: Alvin Toffler, Zhao Ziyang, and China's “New Technological Revolution,” 1979–1991

This article examines former Chinese Premier and General Secretary Zhao Ziyang's policies to respond to a “New Technological Revolution,” which resulted from a most unlikely influence: the prominent American writer Alvin Toffler and other futurists. Drawing on previously unstudied materials and internal Chinese sources, this article demonstrates how Zhao and other senior Chinese officials interpreted and deployed these ideas to advocate for distinctive and influential policies. This policy vision of actionable futurism shaped science and technology policy during the 1980s—especially the major 863 Program to develop advanced technologies—and had great importance in China's economic transformation. In explicating Zhao's role, this account revises the often-repeated Deng Xiaoping–centered story of the 863 Program's origins and reassesses this major initiative, which exemplifies how new expectations about the future, shaped by the transnational movement of ideas, became centrally important to the Chinese leadership's decades-long agenda for China's modernization. This examination also illustrates the distinctiveness of Zhao's policy vision, frequently effaced by official Deng-centered narratives, and the fluidity of conceptions of modernization in this period. The article concludes by suggesting the enduring relevance of these ideas about the future for the current era of Chinese state-led investment in new technologies.

The long-term impacts of Medicaid exposure in early childhood: Evidence from the program's origin

This paper examines the long-term impact of exposure to Medicaid in early childhood on adult health and economic status. The staggered timing of Medicaid's adoption across the states created meaningful variation in cumulative exposure to Medicaid for birth cohorts that are now in adulthood. Analyses of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics suggest exposure to Medicaid in early childhood (age 0–5) is associated with statistically significant and meaningful improvements in adult health (age 25–54), and this effect is only seen in subgroups targeted by the program. Results for economic outcomes are imprecise and we are unable to come to definitive conclusions. Using separate data we find evidence of two mechanisms that could plausibly link Medicaid's introduction to long-term outcomes: contemporaneous increases in health services utilization for children and reductions in family medical debt.

The Suicide Prevention and Depression Awareness Program at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine

To address physician depression and suicide at one U.S. medical school, a faculty committee launched a Suicide Prevention and Depression Awareness Program in 2009 whose focus is medical students', residents', and faculty physicians' mental health. The program consists of a two-pronged approach: (1) screening, assessment, and referral and (2) education. The screening process is anonymous, confidential, and Web based, using customized software created by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The educational component consists of a medical-school-wide campaign including Grand Rounds on physician burnout, depression, and suicide as well as similar sessions geared toward trainees. The authors document the process of developing and implementing the program, including the program's origins and goals, their critical decision-making processes, and successes and challenges of the program's first year.Of the 2,860 medical students, housestaff, and faculty who received the e-mail invitation in the first year, 374 individuals (13%) completed screens, 101/374 (27%) met criteria for significant risk for depression or suicide, and 48/374 (13%) received referrals for mental health evaluation and treatment. The program provided 29 Grand Rounds and other presentations during the first year.This may be the first program that aims to increase awareness of depression and to destigmatize help-seeking in order to prevent suicide and whose target population includes the full panoply of medical school constituents: students, residents, and faculty physicians. The program was well received in its first year, and while demonstrating the prevention of suicides is difficult, the authors are encouraged by the program's results thus far.

Creating Tomorrow's Leaders Today: The Emerging Nurse Leaders Program of the Texas Nurses Association

The Texas Nurses Association initiated an Emerging Nurse Leaders Program as an approach to engaging new nurses in the leadership of the professional association. This article explains the program's origin, the commitment of the Texas Nurses Association to this process, the implementation of the plan, and the discussions that launched a new way of connecting leaders across generations. Further, it is an approach that any professional organization can use to encourage the involvement of new leaders.

Black Power—Nixon Style: The Nixon Administration and Minority Business Enterprise

In the recent debate over minority contract set-asides, many policy-makers have forgotten this program's origins. Richard Nixon, moved by philosophical, practical, and political considerations, made minority business enterprise a theme of his 1968 presidential campaign and his first administration. By using set-asides, the Nixon administration overcame its meager funding of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (OMBE) and encouraged minority entrepreneurship. Nixon's actions influenced federal policy toward minority owned businesses for two decades.

The Swine Flu Immunization Program: Scientific Venture or Political Folly?

The author of this Article, an internationally recognized coroner perhaps best known among laymen for his incisive and tenacious criticism of the Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination, turns his attention to the federal government's 1976--1977 Swine Flu Immunization Program. Dr. Wecht contends that although this program may have been viewed by its key proponents as having great public health importance, or perhaps even political value, its creation and continuation nevertheless were scientifically unjustified. Furthermore, he contends, the federal government failed to inform the public adequately of important facts about the program's origins and progress, and it mismanaged the program in several important respects. Among the topics he discusses are swine flu's epidemiological history (including the 1976 Fort Dix outbreak that propelled swine flu into the national consciousness); the key elements leading to the government's decision to immunize; the government's failure to reevaluate the program seriously as problems arose; the shortcomings of the federal swine flu statute; the inadequacy of the government's investigation of the deaths of three persons in Pittsburgh within a few hours after being vaccinated (a matter that was of immediate concern to the author in his role as Coroner of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania); the long-delayed termination of the program following the emergence of a possible statistical link between the immunizations and an increase in the incidence of the Guillain-Barré Syndrome; the financial and human costs of the program; and the need for calmer, more objective decision making in future situations where immunization of the general populace is being considered.